Gary,

See inserts below.

Rs~

----- Original Message -----
From: Paveza, Gary <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 6:45 AM
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] HP3000 and HP-UX


> The whole "vi is unfriendly" thing always gets me.  What's unfriendly
about
> it?  Sure the commands are not the most intuitive, but at the same time,
> they are extremely powerful.  Some of them even make sense - but I find
> those to be the hardest to remember for some reason.  Not only that, but
> what you learn for vi, also applies to produces like sed (stream editor)
and
> regular expressions in general - and those are used constantly.

You're dead on with this statement.  It's why you use UDC's and command
files, but have to know the commands being executed by them.

> Fancy editors are nice, but I for one tend not to use them for one reason.
> In a crisis situation where I don't have access to tools like qedit
(though
> this is an excellent product for those who don't like vi IMHO), I don't
> necessarily have the time to pull out the vi manual and fumble my way
> through.

Amen, brother!  Personally, I tend to use them, but at least know how
to get along without them.  I have the skills, but choose not use them
with any frequency.

> As for patching, one thing I will say is at least patches are generated
> quickly for problems.  I've seen many cases where a problem is identified,
> and the patch is released for unix first.  Sure a lot of patches are
> generated.  I'll bet that a good number of those is to fix problems that
are
> identified using non-hp products.  I'm not saying that you shouldn't use
> non-hp products, I'm just saying that HPUX is going to have a whole lot
more
> of them than MPE.

This is a catch 22-ish situation.  If the OS development were managed
better, it wouldn't need as many patches.  If patches weren't released as
quickly as they are, it might be easier to manage the OS development
better.  Hmmmm.

> Last HPUX server failure for me was over a year ago.  I won't even mention
> how many MPE failures we've had in that time frame.

Good God, man.  Seek help.  Reading this statement, I had a flashback of a
conversation I had with an ex-client of mine.  They spent thousands of man
hours making/adding custom processes onto their MPE applications in order
to have their 3000 behave like the unix platform one of their staff new
better,
and was used to.  They killed performance and made maintenance a horror.

When I asked one of their operators recently what how the new system
was, her response was "It's wonderful!  It never goes down!".  At first, I
thought "give it time, give it time"; but that may be unfair because the
cause for the performance and maintenance issues don't apply on their
new platform, though the lack of understanding that allowed it on their
3000, still does.

Regardless, if you are using good hardware, and are managing the patches
of your OS, and have even a median level of control over your file system
(i.e., have a moderately stable account/directory structure, and
applications
in place to maintain your databases), you shouldn't have to do anything
to your 3000.  If on top of that, you're having ANY failures, seek outside
assistance to find and correct the problem.  The rest of us don't have those
issues: it's an anomoly.

> This whole topic is kind of amusing to me in that I love MPE and wish it
> wouldn't go away.  Yet, I find myself defending HPUX.  Strange.
> -------------------------------------------------------------

Been there, done that.  The really weird part: it's to my fellow IT people
that I've had to defend Unix.  To my users (most of whom have no idea
what the fuss is about), I get to slam it and call it all the names I like
to
use in describing a change that will cause more grief than it's worth.

Rs~

Russ Smith
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